Many industrial applications produce waste products that are partial emulsions of water and oil and which contain one or more contaminants, such as suspended carbonaceous matter or inorganic matter such as rust scales, catalysts, fines, and the like. Two types of oil and water emulsions are commonly encountered, based on the relative amounts of oil and water: the first, an oil dispersed in water emulsion consists of electrically charged oil droplets dispersed in water, in which the friction between the oil and water phases creates static electrical charges at the oil and water interface and helps to stabilize the emulsion; and the second, a water dispersed in oil emulsion is a viscous, concentrated substance formed when oil comes into contact with water and solids.
The process of separating such emulsion waste products is difficult based, in part, on the general chemistry of emulsions and, in part, because such emulsion waste products are heterogeneous materials produced through diverse and dissimilar processes. The extant technologies are varied but principally attempt to neutralize the charges at the surface of the component droplets and thereafter settle the demulsified residual mixture. Typically, a physical method such as centrifuging (with or without the application of heat, pressure, or both heat and pressure) is combined with one or more of the following:                a) the introduction of a surfactant such as a soap, cresylate, sulfide, sodium carbonate, sodium hydroxide, sodium silicate, or electrolyte bearing an electric charge and which travels to the interfacial film of the droplets, thus reinforcing the repulsion of the droplets;        b) the introduction of a cationic emulsion breaker (the dielectric constants of oil and water cause the oil droplets to carry a negative charge in water);        c) the lowering of the pH, as, for example, with sulphuric acid, to dissolve some of the stabilizing solids, which may range from colloidal to 100 microns, and may include soaps, sulfonated oils, asphaltic residue waxes, salt sulfides, and mercaptans;        d) the introduction of a demulsifying agent, such as polyvalent metal salts, mineral acids, adsorbents, polyamines and polyacrylates and their derivatives, alkyl substituted benzene sulfonic acids, alkyl phenolic resins and their derivatives, substituted polyalcohols, and the like, carrying both hydrophilic and lipophilic groups.        
After charge neutralization and centrifugation have been effected, the resultant phases can be gravity separated, coalesced, filtered, solvent extracted, or eluted by means of floatation or activated carbon adsorption. These processes are expensive (in initial capital investment, ongoing maintenance, and use of natural resources) and inefficient; and thus an economical, efficient means of completely resolving a wide variety of industrial waste emulsions is needed.
Hereinafter in this description of the present invention, the words “hydrocarbon” or “hydrocarbons” shall include hydrophobic organic substances such as oils, bitumen, tars, oil residues, and petroleum products; and the words “soil” or “soils” shall include, as necessary, clays, sands, rocks, and spent drilling muds containing mixtures of water, petroleum oils, other organic liquids, inorganic and organic additives, suspended solids, and drill cuttings.
Hydrocarbon contamination of soils may occur inadvertently, for example, as a result of oil spills or leaks; or deliberately, for example, as a byproduct of a process such as the petroleum exploration industry's production of contaminated sands during pumping of oils from oil wells. In the former case, soils at or adjacent to oil industry facilities such as oil wells, storage tanks, oil pipe lines, oil loading facilities, etc. can become contaminated with hydrocarbons; and owners of such sites may be required by regulatory bodies to remediate these soils. Known remediative methods such as the transfer of the contaminated material to approved off-site landfills or the application of physical or chemical methods to remove, stabilize, or destroy the substances may be effective but are expensive and under increasing regulatory scrutiny.
In the latter case, in oil well drilling operations, drilling fluids containing lubricants and chemical agents called “additives” are pumped through the drill string to lubricate the drill bit and assist in the removal of cuttings as they are flushed to the surface through the annulus around the drill pipe. The techniques described below are then used to separate the drilling fluids from the cuttings. The drilling fluids are then reused, and the cuttings are collected for transport to an approved off-site landfill or for further processing.
The simplest method of dealing with hydrocarbon-contaminated soils is to simply store such soils, either in situ or at approved off-site landfills. However, for regulatory and economic reasons such storage is no longer practicable in many jurisdictions: increasing environmental awareness and the resulting regulations, a paucity of suitable storage sites, and the economic realities of ongoing costs and liability risk (storage sites must be carefully maintained to protect against escape of contaminants into the environment) have combined to limit the applicability of this measure.
Another method used in the cleanup of hydrocarbon-contaminated soils is the disposal of such contaminated soils by incineration. Although this method is simple, inexpensive, and effective as a treatment for disposing of hydrocarbon-contaminated soil, it is extensively regulated and is not permitted in many jurisdictions.
Yet another method is to wash hydrocarbon-contaminated soils with water to mechanically cleanse contaminating hydrocarbons from the soil. In variants of this washing treatment, chemical additives are added to the wash water. However, in the water washing treatment and the variants thereof, the hydrocarbon contaminants and the chemical additives are then transferred to the water, and the water itself must be treated before it can be reused or returned to surface or ground water.
Lastly, and without being exhaustive of all extant methodologies, hydrocarbon-contaminated soil can be cleaned by hot water processing and flotation. Limitations to this method include one or more of high energy expense, poor flotation response, poor selectivity, or the generation of froth that is difficult to handle.
Thus, there is a need for the development of a cost effective, environmentally friendly, and regulatory compliant method for removing or remediating hydrocarbon contaminants from soils.